iBio, Inc. and Caliber Biotherapeutics have selected a fusion protein cancer treatment target to advance on the iBioLaunch platform under the companies’ licensing and collaboration agreement from February 2013. iBio will receive license and development milestones for product targets, as well as royalties on sales. Caliber is responsible for funding clinical development and commercialization. Additional financial terms were not disclosed.

"In addition to its other attributes, iBio technology produces antibodies efficiently," said Robert Erwin, iBio's president. "We are confident our technology will prove superior to traditional animal cell methods for efficient delivery of this promising new class of fusion-protein biotherapeutics, and we look forward to working with Caliber to rapidly move this molecule into clinical trials."

"This further collaboration with iBio gives us even more resources to rapidly optimize our production system," said Dr. Barry Holtz, Caliber Biotherapeutics' chief science and technology officer. "At Caliber we have an advantage in mAb development and large scale production. We do not have to develop a new cell line for each mAb construct. In addition, our bioreactors are individual plants so we do not have to scale-up to larger reactor components. We just grow 2.2 million individual bioreactors if necessary. This allows very rapid process and clinical development and shortens the time to large scale production and ultimately time to market."